SOCHI SCENE: Athletes vs. scientists

SOCHI, Russia – As the number of positive tests for doping at the Olympics has dwindled in recent years, the age-old debate has only increased.

Are drug enforcement officials winning? Or are the athletes and those around them just finding more advanced means to cheat and throw the dogs off the scent?

On a day when a German athlete became the first announced drug test failure of the Sochi Games, that conversation is being had once again. It should come as a surprise that Arne Ljungqvist, the chairman of the IOC's medical commission, sides with his guys.

"Who knows who is the smartest, the athletes and their entourage or our scientists," Ljungqvist said earlier in the Sochi Games. "I put my money on our scientists are probably smarter than those around the athletes."

A Russian biathlete, Irina Starykh, withdrew from the Sochi Olympics because she failed a doping test before the games.

"Here people know that they will be tested," Ljungqvist said. "Those who are on drugs hopefully do not come here, or we will identify them if they take it."

— By Jon Krawczynski — Twitter http://twitter.com/APKrawczynski

___

Associated Press reporters are filing dispatches about happenings in and around Sochi during the 2014 Winter Games. Follow AP journalists covering the Olympics on Twitter: http://apne.ws/1c3WMiu